


The Road to That Happy Ending

by TheMoments (TBs_LMC)



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst and Romance, Angst with a Happy Ending, Author is not ashamed to say she bawled while writing this, Biotic Shepard (Mass Effect), Canon Compliant, Crew Love, Default Shepard (Mass Effect), EDI Lives (Mass Effect), Geth (Mass Effect), Geth Died, James Says What No One Else Will, John Shepard Is Alive, Liara T'Soni Is MShenko's Best Friend, Love, Love Conquers All, M/M, Miranda Died, Normandy-SR2, POV First Person, POV Kaidan Alenko, Post-Mass Effect 3, Reapers Died, Romance, Scents & Smells, Tali'Zorah Died, True Love, Used Character Death Warning Because References Canon Deaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 02:26:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29644365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TBs_LMC/pseuds/TheMoments
Summary: Kaidan thinks about everyone who called Shepard their commander as what’s left of his crew stands before the Normandy’s memorial wall. And then he thinks only about John Shepard, very, very deeply, under Liara’s guidance. Can the depth of love, the connection, that the two men feel for each other bring a happy ending for them all?
Relationships: Kaidan Alenko/Male Shepard
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	The Road to That Happy Ending

**THE ROAD TO THAT HAPPY ENDING**

* * *

There is no way to put grief into words. That’s why none of us speak.

There is no eulogy. No empty speeches about a hero taken from us, sacrificed so we could live.

I daresay most if not all of those present would have given their lives to save his. How could we, then, expect any less from the one we were willing to follow to places from which none should ever have returned?

Time and again we overcame, together. We triumphed, together. We beat the foe, saved the galaxy, won the day. Together.

But we didn’t die together, and that is the blow none of us seemed able to stop reeling from. Some had gone before us. Those stung. Deeply. But of those of us still left, we could not fathom life without him at our helm.

Liara, who had always loved him so deeply, most likely as more than a friend at one point, if not still.

Garrus, who always had been more than a friend…a brother, perhaps, and one who gladly followed Shepard no matter where he’d been or who had rebuilt him. Who, as it turns out, had always had more faith in Shepard than I, if my behavior during the Cerberus years was any indication.

James, who threw himself bodily into protecting his commanding officer at all costs, showing off his N7 tattoo with pride, very much in the way an excited son looking for praise might have to his father figure.

Joker, who has lost not only the man he quite happily flew from one end of the known galaxy to the other, through relays and insane flight paths and suicide missions and impossible feats of piloting, but also lost the woman he’d fallen for, EDI. All AI seemed to be gone, the geth included. Perhaps the only way John could kill the Reapers was to sacrifice not just himself, but our synthetic allies and friends. That’s a shot in the head I don’t know any of us are handling well. I don’t know that Shepard himself would, either.

All those we lost…Miranda, who I didn’t know at all, really. Thane I knew a little, but he was close to Shepard at a time when I wasn’t. Mordin, giving his life to cure the krogan genophage. Tali, who’d also crushed hard on Shepard for years. For whom he had gone to bat like no other, against her own people. But quarian stubbornness had seen them refuse to back down from war with the geth. In the end, both species, wiped out, just like that, with Tali taking her own life in grief before we’d ever gotten to London.

Shepard never got over that image burned into his brain, hearing her weep, watching her go over the edge of the cliff on Rannoch. The pain in his eyes from that moment on, unmatched.

Jack, the Cerberus experiment he’d saved from herself, almost without trying. Jacob, who was starting a family thanks to Shepard’s undying loyalty to crew past and present. Zaeed, who was a little softer around the edges by the time he left for warmer climes.

Wrex, who’d become the best leader the krogan could have ever hoped for in their bid to become more than what they’d been. Who was singlehandedly – along with decidedly strong female influence – and against all odds molding Tuchanka into some semblance of civilization.

Ashley, the fierce soldier we’d lost when Shepard had chosen to save my life over hers on Virmire. How different would his life had been had he left me to die instead? Would it have been easier for him without me around to harass him, question him, fall in love with him?

Legion. Who, for a machine, showed an affinity for Shepard the likes of which I had never witnessed before EDI. He’d never given John an adequate explanation for why he’d used a broken piece of his N7 armor to mend a hole in his body. Why he’d kept it there long after he had access to more adequate materials. I hadn’t thought it possible until getting to know what had once only been a Cerberus-created _Normandy_ AI to me, but I truly believe Legion crushed on John something fierce, whether he recognized it as such or not.

His death hit our commander very hard. I know. I saw the tears that never quite made it past his eyes when we talked of him; they were always there when mention of him was made. And then to wipe out the race Legion died to bring individuality to? I cannot fathom what John must have been feeling, thinking, in those moments.

It truly makes me want to weep. If not for the entire geth race, then for the man whose hand was somehow forced, I’m certain, to steer that race to extinction.

Kasumi, who could never let go of the man she’d loved, and disappeared in the end. How different from her would I be, I wondered, preferring to leave the known world behind forever because the wound that was John Shepard’s absence would never heal. Being larger than life also means that his death would forever be far too large for any of us to handle, separately or together.

Javik, who’d awakened to find himself the last living representation of his species. There would never be another Prothean. But at least he’d been there to help take down the bastards that wiped out his entire species.

Steve Cortez, a man who’d gotten so close to Shepard that he’d seen the shuttle pilot cry on more than one occasion, and helped him start moving past the death of his husband. Had gone with him to leave the last recording of Robert’s voice on a memorial wall rather than at hand where Steve could continue to wallow. Who stood here now with similar tears streaming down his face unabashed. Like he’d lost the second person he’d ever loved that much, maybe.

So many, many people. Admiral Hackett. Anderson. Samara. Aria. Udina. Samantha Traynor. Grunt, whom Shepard gave the chance for a clan to, a family, a _life_ that nobody else seemed willing to provide. Dr. Chakwas, who stuck with Shepard through everything Alliance, Cerberus and when we were rogue, just like Garrus and Liara had. Bailey. Chambers.

And then there was me.

I didn’t deserve him. I doubted him, far too much. Much more than others who I would always consider more loyal to him than I’d been. My heart had never recovered from losing him the first time when I gave in the second time knowing I shouldn’t. Knowing I didn’t deserve his consideration after so long, after how I’d treated him, doubted him.

But it felt right, in the end. It felt _good_. Both of us were just getting too old for this shit. Old soldiers, we’d agreed. Only now I simply felt aged beyond my years as I stood there at the wall of memories inside the _Normandy_. All of us left behind stood silent. Lonely for the man we looked up to and loved each in our own way, and followed into Death and back.

Joined into a team by him.

Left to grieve by him.

And yet I could not bring myself to put his name up there with Anderson’s. I touched the letters, which formed a word I have said more times than I can count, yet they looked wrong. Misshapen. Like they just didn't belong there, or perhaps weren't even forming the name they were meant to. When you looked at something familiar for so long it began to appear foreign. Alien.

They found Anderson. They found John’s weapon. His N7 helmet. They never found him. Wouldn’t let us in to search.

Missing presumed dead.

Presumed dead.

Presumed.

Missing.

I turned to face the rest of the crew… _his_ crew. Garrus met my gaze. Shook his head. Was that hope I saw in his eyes?

Liara finally looked at me. Shook her head just like Garrus. She was the one, after all, who’d found him after he’d been spaced. Surely she…

“Well?” James blurted out. “I know Esteban isn’t one to sit still, what about the rest of you?”

Everyone turned to look at him. Steve’s look of surprise slowly turned to one of understanding.

“What?” James shrugged, massive shoulders hunching like small mountains up toward his ears. “They won’t have N7 training back up and running for at least a year. Gives us plenty of time to find our man, no?”

Liara huffed out a laugh. Steve, too. My shoulders sagged in relief as I rubbed the back of my neck.

Garrus growled, “You got that right.”

“About time,” Chakwas groused.

“Say the word,” Joker smiled, though I noted that sorrow kept it from reaching his eyes. “You’ve still got a pilot.”

“I have nowhere to be but with you,” Javik noted. “Count me in.”

“Well, Kaidan?” Liara asked, moving forward and placing her hands on my shoulders. “If we go, it’s you who’ll be guiding us.”

“Me? I’m no Shepard.”

“No,” she shook her head. “But you’re the one he used his last words to any of us to declare his love to.” She shrugged sheepishly. “We all heard it on the open comm channel.”

The lump in my throat grew more difficult to speak around. “How does that qualify me to look for him?”

“Because you can feel him here,” she replied, placing her hand palm-flat over my heart. “He’s tied to you in a way he isn’t to any of the rest of us.” She smiled softly. “I will join with you to help you find the echoes. If he lives, it will be through you that we find him.”

“I will help, too,” came a familiar voice from everywhere at once.

Joker nearly choked on an inhale. “EDI?” he practically yelled, looking around everywhere, eyes filling with tears. “Where are you?”

All of us in shock, we scrambled looking around corners but there was no silver body to be seen.

“I am in the _Normandy_. My scans knew what was carried in the cloud we were attempting to outrun, and so I isolated my core with algorithms designed to deactivate me and then reactivate only if and when the threat had passed. In essence, I died.”

“EDI,” Joker breathed and there wasn’t a dry eye in front of that memorial wall. “You could have fucking _told me_.”

“There wasn’t time. I barely managed to deaden my core before the cloud hit.” Her voice was thick with emotion, and…it suddenly gave me a hope that hadn’t been there mere seconds before. “There was a…delay in the reactivation. I am…sorry to have distressed you, Jeff.”

His grin grew wider. “EDI,” he cried, quite literally as he hobbled away. “Let’s go find the commander.”

“Yes. And perhaps we can find me a body, too, since I seem to have misplaced mine.”

His laugh rang in the elevator as he headed for the bridge.

“We’ll wait for you two to, uh…figure out our course,” Garrus stated, and the rest of them dispersed.

“I think we should go to Shepard’s quarters,” I told Liara.

“I agree. The stimuli there will help you tune into him.”

“Do you…really think this is possible?” I asked, only then noting that I still had his memorial nameplate in my hand. “For me to somehow use a radar that I don’t have to lead us in the right direction? I mean,” I huffed, “I’m not psychic or whatever.”

“I think that the connections, the bonds, that individuals form with each other, are simply one more scientific tool with which to create, test and then implement hypotheses,” Liara stated with confidence. “After all, I found him the first time he died.”

“You really love him, don’t you?” I asked as the doors slid open on his quarters.

She smiled. “I think we all do, each in his or her own way. Don’t you?”

“Yeah, I guess that makes sense.” I looked thoughtfully toward his computer as we walked into his quarters. “But then why can’t you find him this time?”

“Because now he’s the one that needs to reach out to _us_ ,” she explained. “And it won’t be me he’s reaching out to, Kaidan.”

I put the nameplate down on his desk, shivering at her words. Tapped the glass cage of his hamster, whom I’d fed and watered that morning. Looked at the big tank and fed his fish. My eyes then rested on the bed where the sheets were still rumpled from that last time we’d been together, waiting for the call from Hackett. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to touch a damn thing in here.

My breath hitched. I moved to the bed, sat down, grabbed his gray tee from amongst the sheets. Held it to my face. Inhaled. Knew I didn’t have to feel embarrassed in front of Liara and so just allowed myself to _feel_. Closed my eyes. Breathed in his scent. Breathed out _into_ his scent.

And for the first time, allowed myself to cry softly, “John,” into the fabric.

Liara sat down next to me, held one hand against the side of my head and suddenly she was there inside my mind, watching our last moments here together that night when I’d come with two glasses and a bottle.

_His door swished open. We almost collided._

_“Ah. Can’t sleep either?”_

_“No.”_

_God, he was gorgeous. Restless. Cat on a hot tin roof._

_“Making yourself crazy like this won’t help.”_

_“Kaidan, I need to—”_

_“Shh. Just take five minutes. A quick drink. And then I’ll go.”_

_That smile he gave me. The one that melted me and empowered me every time he directed it my way._

_I tried convincing him he’d done all he could._

_“I’m not a distraction,” I’d told him when he’d accused me of being such. “I’m here to help you relax. Relaxing will help you focus.”_

_Our lips met. It was bittersweet. For us both, I think. We knew that it might be…the last time. I remember my heart hammering. Feeling his doing the same under my touch._

_“I lied,” I confessed, stumbling over my words. “I didn’t come here for a quick drink.”_

_And then he took me to the place that only John Shepard ever could._

Liara backed out of my mind in time to allow that to remain private, at least. “Your relationship,” she whispered, “was so beautiful. He allowed himself to…really be open to you.”

All I could see was him after I’d helped him shuck his jacket off. The gray tee I now held in my hands so soft as I bunched it up, my palms on his skin, moving up his sides, tee shirt rising and rising until he had to pull away and take it off. His body made me crazy. He once told me mine did the same to him. Our biotics flaring, sizzling, chafing, encompassing.

That tee stayed with us the entire time we were in bed that night, ground under our bodies as he took his time loving every inch of me to the point of saturation. And here, now, after an entire week, it waited for me. Because he hadn’t been here to toss it into the laundry.

I inhaled again. Focused on his face. His smile. His eyes. The clarity of him allowing his emotions to come through at last. My heart racing mercilessly now like it had then.

“Reach out,” Liara breathed. “Ask him where he is. Tell him you’re looking for him. Become _his_ beacon.”

It says something that I didn’t feel awkward not only listening to her but doing as she said. “John,” I whispered into his shirt as it took the brunt of my tears. “I’m here. Please help me find you.”

_“Are we gonna make it, Kaidan?”_

My breath hitched. His voice was as real to me as if he’d been the one sitting next to me instead of Liara.

Her eyes widened but she didn’t speak. Just continued to hold her hand against my neck.

_“Give us hope and a fighting chance, hell. The Reapers better watch themselves.”_

I choked out a staccato laugh. It was as if he was right _there_. Was I losing my mind in all of this?

“Let him come,” Liara’s ethereal voice filtered to me from somewhere distant.

_“You ready?”_

For you to die, John? No. Never.

“We know this is good-bye,” I whispered, voice breaking as waves of grief consumed me, our last minutes together in London on that corner.

_“Yeah. We know the score.”_

NO.

_“It’s been quite a ride.”_

He saved me and James.

_“You’ve gotta get out of here.”_

_“Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.”_

_“Don’t argue with me, Kaidan.”_

And then he left. I watched him run the opposite direction of me. Was too injured to follow. Couldn’t feel the pain. Couldn’t feel anything but fear. Grief. I knew. I _knew_.

I looked up toward the door of his quarters and swore against every ounce of sense in me, that he was standing there as solidly as I was sitting here. “Don’t leave me behind,” I begged as our eyes met.

“No matter what happens,” he said, with all the intensity of the moment we’d shared in the danger zone, “know that I love you. Always.”

I reached out now, as I had then.

“I love you, too. Be careful.”

I rose to my feet, pulled toward this specter of the man I love beyond all reason. “Don’t leave me behind,” I repeated.

“I was careful,” he smiled.

“You always find a way.”

I got to where he stood, my hand outstretched.

He faded away.

All I could do was stand there, his shirt balled against my face. My hand hovering mid-air.

_“Find me.”_

I huffed out a sob. “He’s alive.” I whirled to face Liara, who rose to her feet with a smile on her face. “Liara, he’s _alive_.”

“Tell us where to go, Kaidan,” she said, rushing to my side. “Hold onto him, keep your eyes closed if you must, I’ll guide you to the star map.”

I don’t know how she did it. Hell, maybe she used her biotics to hover me there. But nobody was in the CIC when she told me to open my eyes. I was standing where _he_ had always stood. I touched the bar that brought the holo map to life. Little by little I was aware that others were gathering. I could feel them, but I held onto John as tightly as I could.

_“Don’t leave me behind.”_

This time those were _his_ words. _His_ voice.

_“Kaidan…”_

I looked at the map. My hand brought up Sol. My heart and my eyes darted to Earth. I saw us standing on that corner, me pulling him in for one last kiss. And I _saw_.

_Rubble, metal, sheared and torn._

“London,” I breathed.

_Armor. Black. Glint of silver on dog tags._

“Liara, London.”

_N7 imprint. Rise and fall of…a gasp. Breath. LIFE!_

“John!” I cried out, startling everyone around me. “Joker. London. _Now_.”

“Plotting course,” Joker stated. “Suddenly very happy we didn’t outrun the Sol system even though it cost you your body, EDI.”

“As am I, Jeff.”

I turned to Liara. “We’re gonna find him, aren’t we?”

“I’m certain of it.”

I stepped down from the navigational dais. “Thank you.”

“You were the one who allowed yourself to be vulnerable enough to let him come to you. Now it’s up to us all to comb through London to make good on that.”

“I think…” Hope blossomed in me for the first time since _Always_. “We may be on the road to a happy ending after all.”

Her smile was genuine when she replied, “I believe that with all my heart, Kaidan.”

His people were all working together to bring him home.

And bring him home, we would.

_“Don’t leave me behind.”_

“Yeah,” I smiled as I entered the elevator to head back to his quarters, clutching his shirt to my chest. “That’s not gonna happen.”


End file.
